These stories, regardless of whether they are true or not, give a picture of what really happened at that time. A lot of people were mining or getting Bitcoins but since they were worth almost nothing they didn't give it much thought. Many of them lost the keys, and therefore the bitcoins. In some cases there is talk of millions of Bitcoins lost:

Lost Bitcoin: 3.7 million Bitcoin are probably gone forever

Nearly 4 Million Bitcoins Lost Forever, New Study Says

It is sad on the one hand, but on the other hand, better for us because more scarcity gives more value to our holdings.

Don't think so, these people who bought bitcoin back then did not know that it will come this far, if they knew then they would have taken care of their bitcoin and the address as to prevent it from being lost. I am happy that the person still has the wallet, but I don't think that it is being busy that caused that person to lost track of the bitcoin that the person has bought because bitcoin is not a big deal for many back then, maybe that person just jump in and bought some then forget about it.

Well in the end it happened, even if it is hard to imagine. I can understand though. If I bought Bitcoin so early, I probably just do it for fun since it was fairly unknown and nobody knows how far it will go, and then they forgot to check again and never bothered to check crypto again, or at some point only read the bad news.

Things would be different If I already planned to invest for the long term and believes the assets will grow in value though. Just last week ago I decided to buy a bunch of cryptos and then decide to 'quit' from crypto for a while, and see how it will go 3 years later. Hopefully, it turned into a fortune.

People also forget much more important things than if they bought something 9 years ago and paid the same just a few dollars - it's not an investment you think about every night before you go to bed. Since that person offers 0.2 BTC as a reward, it’s probably a max of 2 BTC or maybe less.

There are many examples where some people (much more informed) have lost real wealth because they were careless as is the case with a person who threw an HDD in the trash with a few thousand BTC (and this is not the only such case). One can say whatever one wants, but until 2017 happened people were pretty careless with private keys/seed, and the same thing that is happening now was happening three years ago when many remembered they had something quite valuable.

Specifically, it's not a problem that the paper was in the closet - the problem is that it wasn't protected in a way that someone couldn't just damage it - children and pets don't care too much about the paper, they both destroy it while playing with it.

So, you want to say he doesn't watch the news. BTC even got hyped in 2017 because of its price. He was continuously busy from 2017.
Dude really?
I would have left everything to find it if I have that amount of BTC.
I think its complete fraud news.

something strange too if he had something that at that time was not something of high value and only to be able to buy extension games online only. but he keeps it and forgets it for something that may seem reasonable and trustworthy but he forgets that by cheating in any way there will be a gap where the fraud committed will be openly open because of the fault of himself who made up the story does not make sense .

Moreover, the story that was built seemed to impose the will that actually happened, because if all this time he had never even heard the news about bitcoin. because we know a lot of news about hackers who do the trick by asking for a ransom with bitcoin. this news quite seizes almost all existing media and does he not know !!! strange thing.
not to mention the news that bitcoin reached ATH in two periods in 2013 and 2017, even this has taken a lot of attention from the media and maybe also social media.

but this we cannot blame because there are also people who have such assumptions because they think that if I have a certain amount of bitcoin and how do people react to the story, of course if it goes viral he feels that there is his own happiness.

This question will be asked again and again , even if anyone pretend to be forgotten some precious things which is more valuable than others. Also, it's more likely an account of those users who are already on this forum and want to make jokes on others. Just checkout recent reply of that user who makes an announcement of giving bitcoin to others which is ridiculous. Only newbies will fall for that without knowing the rules.

unfortunately most of the topics we have been seeing in this forum over the past couple of months were from people who had bought some sort of fake wallet thinking there is a lot of money in it and have been wasting other people's time trying to help them recover these "wallets".

the reality is that whenever price rises it attracts another group of newcomers some of whom fall for the old scams. fake wallets and malwares are the most common methods among them.

Easy to say, hard to prove. Some are presenting 'proofs' but we all know how unrealistic this market is. Many people are making stories which are not true in the first place. Purpose? Looking for sympathy? Merit(most of the time)? Or they just want to do so. All I know is that, those people who are really having such huge amounts will not be found in this forum telling other people what they have. They are more likely busy making profit from continuing their investment and trading habits. They won't spend time arguing with other people or just being boastful at them.

They might didn't expect bitcoin to reach this price and didn't comprehend how to store bitcoin correctly or just forget the password. They might have tried, but failed, no one could help them to obtain the lost coins, if someone could, then we should be worried about satoshi's coins.